Fight Back! News

News and Views from the People's Struggle

AfricanAmerican

By Ryan Hamann

Oshkosh, WI – On June 16, United Action Oshkosh (UAO) hosted a celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. Roughly 30 people from the area attended the event where UAO offered free food and drinks, provided an extensive selection of music, and some works celebrating important Black and African historical figures, ranging from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Thomas Sankara.

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By Frank Chapman

Karl Marx

Chicago, IL – Karl Marx was born May 5, 1818 in the town of Trier, Prussia. He was not born into a revolutionary family but he was born in revolutionary times, in the wake of the French Revolution and the decline of the Prussian Empire. The French Revolution came to Trier during the Napoleonic wars. It tore the city out of the Holy Roman Empire and for two decades before the birth of Marx, it replaced the feudal society, with its chartered privileges, with a government in which all citizens were equal under the law. It was a turbulent period in which all the old, feudal orders of Europe were trembling in the face of bourgeois led popular revolutions.

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By staff

Mao Zedong with U.S. revolutionary Robert Williams.

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following April 16, 1968 statement from Mao Zedong on the assassination of Martin Luther King. Statement by Comrade Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, in Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression

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By staff

Frank Chapman

Chicago, IL – A prominent leader of the movement against police crimes, Frank Chapman, of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, condemned the March 27 decision by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to not prosecute the Baton Rouge, Louisiana cops who murdered Alton Sterling in July 2016.

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By staff

Tyrone Williams with supporters following release from jail.

Chicago, IL – People power prevailed over the racist Cook County court system on March 15 as Tyrone Williams, a leader in the movement for community control of the police, was released from jail after being held incommunicado for seven days.

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By Frank Chapman

Black Panther is great entertainment.

Chicago, IL — First of all, this movie took me back to my childhood love of fantastic tales of adventure and romance. So, for me, it was great entertainment made possible by cinematic art at its finest. It was a movie sprung from the pages of a comic book, moving pictures full of enchanting moments of musical chants, poetry flowing through panoramic scenes of spectacular beauty enhanced by the liquid murmurs of water falls. Most importantly, Black Panthe r is a movie endowed with the presence of Black African folk reflecting their social reality as dreams by way of rituals embellished by the contest of battles, dance and song.

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By Ryan McClure

Jacksonville, FL – University of North Florida (UNF) Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) launched a campaign focused on the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement last year, and recently won several of its core demands. SDS fought for demands that the campus include a major in African American Studies, for the university to hire more teachers of color and for the university to increase the enrollment of students of color.

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By staff

Chicago Black History Month event organized by FRSO

Chicago, IL – 75 people gathered at a Black History Month event sponsored by Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Feb. 3. They chanted, clapped and sang along to the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice as the program began.

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By Eric Struch

48th anniversary of assassination of Fred Hamption & Mark Clark

Chicago, IL – Dec. 4 marked the 48th anniversary of the assassination of Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, and Defense Captain Mark Clark. They died in a predawn raid by a joint operation of the Chicago Police Department, Cook County State's Attorney's Office and the FBI.

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By staff

#WalkingWhileBlack is not a crime

Shipman being stopped by police in late June 2017.

Jacksonville, FL – Around 25 members of different civil rights organizations spoke out at the Jacksonville city council meeting, Dec. 12, to demand an end to the racial profiling and the racist ticketing policies of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Members of the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC), the Northside Coalition, the Jacksonville Progressive Coalition, UNF Students for a Democratic Society as well as the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference spoke out at city council, saying that #WalkingWhileBlack is not a crime and demanded a halt to the pedestrian ticketing program run by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

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